Mass Effect 2 Kira Shepard 5 The Rock
by RickF7666
Summary: This is about the Arrival DLC and the many problems I had with the story.  This is also the end of my Mass Effect 2 stories for Shepard.  So there is a bit of a summation of ideas formulated in the previous stories.


The Rock

It was always the smell that got to her.

With Betarians -for all the possible reasons she had to hate them- the thing that always bothered her the most was _their smell_. It was like someone poured molasses into a bucket of battery acid. It wasn't strong by any means, but it was always there...like an itch you couldn't scratch.

Commander Kira Shepard sat on the couch in her cabin aboard the Normandy II, reviewing the events of her last mission. She'd been told that there were over three hundred thousand Betarians in the Bahak system.

Now there_ was_ no Bahak system.

Killing Betarians had never bothered her. Collectively they had every bad trait Humans had. The difference was that they _reveled_ in them. Oh sure, there were still plenty of Humans who were as bad -if not worse- than any Betarian...and generally Shepard had no problem weeding _them_ from the gene pool either. Betarians were uniformly like the _worst_ of humanity...with _that smell_ thrown in for good measure.

Seemingly in support of Shepard's personal feelings about Betarians, the Alliance had fought quite a few conflicts against them. In one of those conflicts Commander Shepard received a title she at one time had been proud of: _"The Butcher of Torfan"_. That particular moniker was why the Alliance always seemed to call on _her_ whenever a group of Betarian terrorists popped up to threaten a Human colony. Commander Shepard always lived up to her reputation as a "Butcher" of Betarians. Granted, a few _Humans_ always got themselves killed in the process...but no Betarian ever walked away to threaten another colony.

The Alliance had pinned several medals to Shepard's chest for her past actions, but_ now_ they wanted her to stand trial. What had once been whispered suspicions about her "faking her own death" to go work for Cerberus had now become a_ rallying cry_ for those who accused her of being a xenophobe.

Shepard was really beginning to regret turning down Captain Anderson when he wanted to petition the Counsel to reinstate her _Specter_ status.

The Commander wasn't afraid to face her accusers. What terrified her was what might happen if she wasn't free to act when the Reapers finally came. She was the one person who couldn't ignore the coming invasion. Her dreams were still haunted by the images implanted by the _Prothean beacon_ three years earlier. Between the beacon and the Prothean cipher she got from the Thorian, she could "think like a Prothean." With the destruction of the Reaper's Prothean cybernetic slaves, known as "_the Collectors,"_ Shepard was now the last legacy of a civilization that had once spanned the galaxy. Everything she had done since was to desperately try and stop the cycle of destruction the Reapers claimed had been going on for _millions of years_.

The Protheans had not had any warning of the coming wave of destruction, but with _the Conduit_ they had taken steps to warn the civilizations that rose from their ashes. Shepard had postponed the inevitable Reaper invasion_ twice_ now. The first time had cost the lives of so many defenders of Counsel space -and even the Counsel themselves. The _second _time had now seen the destruction of _the entire Bahak system_, and the three hundred thousand Betarians that had called it their home.

After the _first_ averted invasion, Shepard had been called a hero. _Now_ they are calling her a criminal_..._a mass murderer. She wondered if her absent father and his friends would think she was a hero.

The events leading up to the destructions of the Bahak system continually played through Shepard's mind. In hindsight she should have known something was rotten when Admiral Hackett contacted her _directly_. Captain Anderson had made things very clear that the Alliance Military was taking a _hands-off_ approach to Shepard and her activities -yet here was the Admiral himself! Shepard rarely ignored her instincts-and when she did she always paid a price- but she was so surprised and honored by Admiral Hackett's contact that she went against her better judgment. It reminded her of her time on the _first_ Normandy.

Looking back, those times were so simple and comforting: the first _Human_ Specter; her first ship command; and a legitimately _righteous_ mission. In those innocent times there were no doubts...no shades of gray. In Shepard's current excitement and nostalgia she had forgotten what a politically motivated _manipulator_ Admiral Hackett was. Like the mission he had sent her on to assassinate that Human criminal leader, "Lord" Darius, to cover up the fact the Alliance _itself _had been supplying him weapons to fight the Betarians. Ultimately she had done the Admiral's dirty work, but that didn't change the fact that he had withheld information on the mission.

Shepard _should_ have been more suspicious when Hackett had insisted she go on a stealth mission to rescue an undercover operative named Dr. Kenson _without_ any of her stealth-capable team members. Granted, both Thane and Katsumi had left the team for personal reasons, but they would have come if she had called. Not to mention that Shepard, herself, had never been accused of being particularly stealthy. As a matter of fact, the Admiral had insisted that she not take _any_ of her team! If her opponents were to be anyone but Betarians, she may well have refused to do the mission.

Little did she know at the time the Betarians weren't the_ real_ threat.

The rescue had gone without a hitch. Betarians were just as easy to kill as ever. The thing that sent a cold shiver up Shepard's back was when Dr. Kenson mentioned that they had uncovered a _Reaper artifact._ That sense of dread increased when the good doctor blithely dismissed Shepard's concerns over Reaper _mental indoctrination_. When Shepard contacted the Normandy to let them know that she was going with Dr. Kenson to the asteroid base, she sent a coded message over her omni-tool telling them to keep their distance.

Once they arrived on the asteroid and Dr. Kenson explained that the Reapers were going to use the Mass Relay in this system in _two days_ to begin their invasion, Shepard's survival instinct began screaming at her. Something was very wrong! How could Dr. Kenson know about this invasion? Why wait for two more days? ...and why was this asteroid base _so large_ for a simple listening post?

When the Doctor opened those double doors to the room with the "artifact", many of Shepard's questions were answered. How did Dr. Kenson know? Because she was now under the control of the Reaper, _"Harbinger."_ Harbinger also assaulted Shepard's mind, trying to gain control, but she was able to fight it off... so the Reapers went to _plan "B"._

Waves of highly trained _Alliance Military_ operatives attacked Shepard! These troops weren't like the confused and listless Salarians she had encountered on Virmire. What was it about _this_ artifact that allowed Harbinger to control them, and yet still retain their competence? As good as they might be, though, Shepard was better...and it wasn't until they brought up an YMIR Mech that the indoctrinated drones put Shepard on the ropes. When the YMIR finally overloaded and exploded, Shepard nearly lost consciousness. Struggling to stand, she only needed a few minutes to regain her strength, but Harbinger didn't give her those precious minutes. The Reaper attacked her mind a _second time_ and the world tilted and lost focus.

As a glowing-eyed Dr. Kenson stood over Shepard, her last thought was to morbidly wonder if death would stick this time.

Shepard woke to the panicked voice of a woman crying, "The sedatives aren't working! She's waking up!" Years of training kicked-in as Shepard used her enhanced strength and biotics to break her restraints and punch the two still-surprised guards! The panicked woman had run from the room, sealing the doors behind her. With her head rapidly clearing, Shepard picked up the assault rifles from the two now-dead guards. Not her preferred weapon, but she _did_ know how to use them. Bracing against the recoil, Shepard turned an assault rifle on the windows separating her and the woman now visible on the other side -to little effect. The room she was in was some sort of maintenance bay and it had _reinforced_ windows.

Shepard thought, "Of course it couldn't be_ that_ easy..."

Apparently they were still on the strangely-oversized asteroid base. Searching the room she was in, Shepard soon found a mech testing console. A minor bit of hacking and she was able to take control of one of the mechs lined up against the wall in the next bay -the bay with the impatient, panicking woman! The mechs were in for repairs, so the controls were a bit shaky, but Shepard soon had one headed toward the woman still waiting at the door controls. Unfortunately, the indoctrinated woman didn't just stand there. _She_ activated a pair of _her own_ mechs from another part of the maintenance bay. The two mechs opened fire on Shepard's mech, but she had her remote-controlled robot _rip the arm off_ one of the attackers...and use the pistol it was holding to _blow the head off_ the remaining mech! Mechs were programmed to fight _people_, not other mechs, and thus automatically aimed at center mass -where Shepard's mech was most heavily armored. This was their undoing. The trapped woman fired at Shepard's mech, but Shepard ignored her and instead fired at the power conduit running to the door! The resulting explosion killed the woman and reduced Shepard's mech to so much scrap.

It took Shepard very little time to find where they had stashed her armor and gear. Maybe the Reaper indoctrination _had_ made them a bit more dull-witted. She checked her chrono and found that _two days_ had gone by, and she only had a few more hours before the Reapers were supposed to be coming through the Mass Relay! Shepard could still feel Harbinger pushing at her mind, but her mind had somehow built a defense, and now Harbinger's efforts seemed feeble. _Something_ had changed in the last two days. The Reapers still seemed formidable, but no longer did she doubt her ability to defeat them. _How_ that change had happened she wasn't sure -and now was not the time to find out.

Shepard needed to find out what had been going on over the last two days, and fast! Her comm connection to the Normandy was picking up nothing but static. "Well I guess I'm just going to have to find a terminal to get an outside line."

Questions percolated up in Shepard's mind, demanding her attention. Why was she still alive? Where was the Normandy? How could the Reapers return through a normal Mass Relay when _the Citadel_ had always been needed in the past? ...and why wasn't she being rushed by tons of guards? Had she already killed all the guards? Well, at least for the _last _question, she was bound to find out soon.

Shepard raced down empty corridors and soon heard Dr. Kenson's voice over the intercom, directing the remaining guards to intercept her. It didn't take long for those guards to make their presence known. Shepard was all too aware that these were _Alliance Military personnel_ she was killing, but the clock was ticking and a lot more than_ their_ lives hung in the balance. She found it easier telling herself that they were _already lost_ to the Reapers...that they had died when Harbinger had taken their will from them.

Shepard finally reached a console she could use to contact the Normandy -but she barely got a word out before Dr. Kenson was able to sever the connection!

Further use of the console showed that their asteroid was under power, and moving significantly closer to the Mass Relay -though not quite on a collision course. Dr. Kenson had previously told Shepard that she had planned to ram the asteroid _into_ the Relay, to destroy it and keep the Reapers from arriving...but since the Doctor was actually being_ controlled_ by a Reaper, why move the asteroid close to the Relay? Why go anywhere near it?

Suddenly Shepard knew why. Shepard didn't understand _how_ she could know, but she was certain she knew the truth.

That device sticking out of the floor _wasn't_ the artifact -_the entire asteroid was_.

The asteroid/artifact was an_ amplifier _for the Reapers. They were going to use it to amplify the Mass Relay -to take the place of the giant mass relay that was the Citadel- and the two day countdown had been how long it was going to take to maneuver the asteroid/artifact into position.

"Well, let's see if what Dr. Kenson had originally told me would stop the Reapers will _actually work."_ Shepard's fingers flew across the console, imputing new vectors for the massive engines controlling the asteroid. The deck shifted beneath her feet as the hurtling asteroid slowly reoriented.

Dr. Kenson screamed across the intercom, "What are you doing?"

"Doctor, I'm just implementing _your _idea." The smile on Shepard's face was anything but pleasant.

The Doctor snarled, "If I can't gain control of the engines then I'll just have to destroy this facility! Because of_ you_ everyone on this asteroid will die!"

Shepard scoffed, "I've _already_ killed more than half of your people here. Why should I care if I kill _the rest _of your Reaper drones?"

Checking the computer controls, Shepard found that Dr. Kenson was headed toward the main reactor core.

Shepard had less than two hours to get off this rock or she felt certain there wouldn't be_ anything left of her _for Cerberus to run through the Lazarus project again!

The deck shifted once more. Shepard scanned the console and found that the power had been cut to the engines. Dr. Kenson had shut down the reactor's cooling system, which caused the reactor to reduce its power output to keep from overheating. "Damnit" thought Shepard. The asteroid's trajectory had been changed, but not enough. It would still miss the Relay, and Shepard didn't know whether or not the artifact could still be used. She couldn't take that chance. Bringing up a schematic of the station she soon found the location of the reactor cooling controls.

Racing though the asteroid station Shepard came upon several pockets of resistance, but she made short work them. Finding the cooling controls was easier than she expected. After re-enabling the cooling system she used her biotics to jam the controls. If things went as planned, no one would ever need to use these controls again. With the second reactor cooling control locked down, the engines were once again directing the asteroid, and Shepard, on its suicidal run into the Mass Relay!

The "good Doctor's" voice once again shrilled over the intercom, "You've done nothing, Shepard! I can still override power to the engines. Try and stop me!"

Shepard didn't bother to respond. She simply smiled. This wasn't a friendly smile. No...it was cold, hard and self-satisfied...the smile of a predator on the hunt. She had been hacking computers since her first days on the streets of New York. It's what allowed her to thrive in the 10th Street Reds. It was a simple matter to bring up the plans for the facility and find Dr. Kenson's _new_ location.

It turns out Dr. Kenson wasn't far. As Shepard stalked into the primary reactor control room, her voice dripped with menace, "Step away from the reactor."

Dr. Kenson's back was to Shepard and her voice gritted with desperation, "You've ruined everything! I can't hear the whispers anymore..."

"If I wasn't so pissed I might actually feel sorry for you. You were just a tool and you've outlived your usefulness. So turn around. NOW."

"You've taken them away from me. I will never see the Reapers' Arrival."

Dr. Kenson slowly turned around and held up what was clearly the trigger for an explosive. "All you had to do was stay asleep. None of this- "

The last was cut off as Shepard's hyper-velocity bullet penetrated Dr. Kenson's brain.

The dead doctor had been no demolitions expert. As Kenson's body fell to the floor, the trigger she was holding impacted with enough force to set off the explosives hastily planted near the reactor! Shepard was thrown back against a wall - slightly stunned by the impact but quickly regaining her feet. The unchanged throb of the engines told her that Dr. Kenson's bomb was unsuccessful. The asteroid was still accelerating towards the Relay...and the amount of time Shepard had to get off was quickly running out!

With communications still being blocked, Shepard knew she needed to find her own way out of the doomed base -and fast! Moving as quickly as she dared, Shepard hastened down seemingly endless corridors until she finally reached the air-lock to the exterior landing pad. She suspected that any final resistance she might run into would be here.

Shepard sealed her helmet and waited for the hissing of the air being evacuated from the air-lock to fall silent. She stepped out onto the airless tarmac and was almost immediately fired upon! Ducking behind some shipping crates she fired back. There were a lot fewer aggressors, but they _did_ have another YMIR Mech. Thankfully the men were more interested in making it aboard the last departing shuttles than in killing her, which made taking out the heavily armed robot less problematic.

With the silent explosion of the Mech, Shepard was -as far as she knew- the last thing alive aboard the doomed asteroid. She could see the Mass Relay growing ever larger above her! Sprinting across the now deserted landing pad, she accessed an external maintenance terminal for the base communications array.

Turning off the jammer, she called the Normandy.

Shepard stretched out on the couch and stared at the Earth through the portal above her. It didn't sooth any of the questions that wouldn't settle in her mind. Could she have done anything different? Did destroying the system really make any difference?

At the very least she had been able to sort through her memories and answer some of the questions she had woken up with.

Why had the Reapers not killed her?

Harbinger had been probing her mind about_ the Conduit._ The Reapers could control the Mass Relays, but if Shepard had the Prothean Conduit technology imbedded in her brain then the galaxy's defenders could move from planet to planet _without_ the use of the Relays. If the Reapers were to be believed, they had been committing genocide every fifty thousand years for millions of years, but _something new_ could still, possibly hinder their plans.

Why had no one from the Normandy come to rescue her for two days?

Miranda had taken Shepard's coded warning about the Reaper artifact to heart and had ordered the crew to do nothing. As the asteroid had been moving closer to the Relay, Miranda almost had a _mutiny_ on her hands! Shepard's _brief contact_ with the Normandy had been the only thing that kept Garrus, Tali, Grunt and Legion from assaulting the base on their own. As much as Shepard appreciated her friends' loyalty and willingness to _jump into the fire_ after her, if she had lost _them_ to the effects of the indoctrination_..._it would have been almost more than she could bear!

Of all the "maybes" that couldn't be answered, Shepard was confident about one thing: she had removed at least one weapon from the Reaper's arsenal. But at this moment she could only _hope_ that all of Harbinger's big pronouncements were just so much bravado.

Kira Shepard's eyes once again focused on the Earth hovering above her. She draped her arm over her eyes, blocking out the view of planetary features she knew so well. Shepard hadn't spend more than a day or two on Earth since joining the Alliance Military, and now they had called her home to _stand trial_. She could always just walk away...essentially confirming all the rumors about herself and Cerberus. But no, it was not in her to walk away from a fight.

And what of Kaidan? He'd always been a true believer when it came to the Alliance Military. It had taken quite a bit of effort to repair their relationship after Horizon. Maybe_ that_ was her real motivation for submitting to the trial. How could the thought of disappointing this one man pain her so much?

After the death of her mother and abandonment by Miranda, Shepard kept everyone at arm's length. Other people weren't quite "real" to her. She had seen how some had a hard time coping with losing people under their command or in their unit. She had always just thought of them as weak, but now she understood. This crew she had gone through the Omega Relay with had come to mean more to her than just mere moving parts of the ship. Garrus Vakarian, Tali'Zorah, Dr. Chakwas, Joker and even Miranda had somehow become the family she lost as a child...and it had all started with Kaidan Alenko.

Shepard stood up purposefully and walked over to her bed, where an Alliance dress uniform was laid out. She had never worn this _particular_ uniform as all the ones she had possessed were destroyed along with the original Normandy. Thinking of the Normandy had once again made her question how _anything_ of her could have remained after planetary reentry. This was a subject that she had been ignoring, but maybe it was time to get Liara and Miranda together and hash out the details.

Donning the uniform that she hadn't worn in over two years felt right. She had been wearing the _Cerberus_ uniform for the last several months, but it had always made her feel a bit itchy. Shepard had been trying to disregard her past dealings with Cerberus and focus solely on the fact that _they_ seemed to be the only ones taking the Reaper threat seriously. Shepard was certain that she would be asked about more than what happened in the Bahak.

The Bahak system..._the entire system_...gone. Destruction on this scale _should_ be mind-numbing -and perhaps it was, for Shepard's mind took it in stride. No shock or dismay. No regret or self-recrimination. There _was_ something about the destruction that _did _bother her, though...and Shepard's bout of introspection demanded she examine it. Was it the loss of three hundred thousand Betarians? No. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that she didn't care about _them_. Billions of sentients died _every day_ in the galaxy. The numbers were just too large for anyone to grasp. What difference did it make if these Betarians died? So what was it that _did_ bother her? Was it the loss of the solar system? Something that had existed for billions of years -well before the Reapers had begun their cycle of genocide- was now gone forever. How could three hundred thousand Betarians compare to that? Had the Reapers ever done something comparable?

For this one system, hadn't Commander Kira Shepard become _every bit_ the lethal menace the Reapers would have been?

The conclusions were too big for her. Shepard would let the philosophers debate _those_ questions. She was a soldier, and her duty was to stop the Reapers at all costs.

She would make the Reapers regret leaving her alive.


End file.
